I have decided I want to cut down the amount of cow milk that I drink. Lately I have not really been enjoying my tea with milk. My usual is Rooibos with a bit of milk no sugar.
I drank a lot of coffee before I was pregnant. Morning-Sickness, no lets call it what it is, All-Day-Sickness put a stop to that. I could not even drink Rooibos let alone coffee. I do now occasionally have a cup of coffee but I am finding that I don’t enjoy it like I used to.

I like having a hot drink now the question is what should I try?

In my cup at the moment I have some Coca Tea which does not taste so good on its own but with lemon juice is quite nice

It is a tea of the Inca and supposed to help control mood and appetite, both of which can do with some controlling. Especially since my domestic worker asked me if I was pregnant again, I replied that I was definitely not so she said, oh well then I must just be fat! Coca is the non addictive leaves of the plant they use to make cocaine. It was used a medicinal plant by the Incas long before the process that would change the chemical configuration to extract cocaine.

I am not even sure where I got this box, it has been hanging on the tea shelf for ages.

What do you drink?
Do you take milk and sugar?
What new drinks have you tried?
Any suggestions for something interesting I can try?

Permaculture promotes planting in group of companion plants that each help the other to grow better so the group grows better than the individual things on their own. One of the popular groups that I came across was called the 3 sister. It has a Native American origin as these 3 form part of the staple Native American diet.

Excuse my simple drawing

The story goes:
Corn, the oldest sister, was said to grow strong and proud. Squash, the youngest sister, crouched at the feet of the other two, keeping them protected from predators. Beans, the middle sister leaned on her older sister for support and twined the three together.

I am one of 3 girls, so Rachel asked if my older sister was the tallest so I said no I was, so she said then I have to be the corn, Jenni can be the beans and my younger sister Sarah is the squash.

How it works

The corn grows tall and provides a frame for the beans to climb up and grow on which the squash on the bottom acts as a sort of living mulch. Providing shade and preventing water loss. Beans also act as a nitrogen fixer and squash and corn are both heavy on the soil.

Technique

-You make flat top mounds of soil that are about 30cm high ( I am not sure mine got quite so high) and about 48-50cm in diameter. I used worm compost, some shop bought compost as I did not have enough and some of our soil.

- I put a glass water bottle upside down in the center to act as a direct waterer

- We had previously started growing corn in seedling trays and so I planted the small plants out around the bottle using the North, South, East, West Pattern. These may need to be thinned out later to about 2 or 3 of the strongest corn plants
- In the link I read on line about this method they said to plant the corn direct and then wait until it was about 2 weeks old then add the beans around. Since I had the corn plants already I just planted the bean seeds around now. I planted about 5-6 bean seeds per mound.

- The squash gets planted in the side of the mound and you really only need 1 but I planted 2 in each and will thin out as I see how they grow. I had some of these already in seedling trays too. I used gem squash which would probably not been the squash used by the Native Americans but they grow well here.

- I mulched my mounts for now with straw as it is very very hot at the moment and I did not want the small plants to burn and I added small logs or bricks around the mounts to help contain the water.

To start with there are a few things you need to know:

- Fertilizer has 3 basic ingredience (NPK) Nitrogen (N) for stem and leaf development, Phosphorus (P) which helps root development and flower and fruit production and Potassium (K) which is good for all round plant health and resistance to disease.

- Human Urine has these same 3 ingredients – you can see where I am going with this can’t you.

- On average a person pees 4-5 times a day. Each time the toilet is flushed it uses about 8 Liters per flush, that is 40 liters a day of fresh drinking water, per person per day!

- This water goes into the sewage system where the process to make water safe to drink again involves chemical treatment and separation.

- fresh human urine is sterile and free from bacteria. In fact it is so sterile that you can drink it when it is fresh but lets not got there okay. When urine gets older than 24 hours the urea turns to ammonia which causes the wee smell.

Yes you guessed it human urine is clean and makes great free fertilizer and it saves water in the process.

How to use it:

If you have external genitaila (a penis) you can pee outside in the garden. I am lead to believe that it is a ritual amongst boys and dare I say men to ‘water’ the garden. A girlfriends parent’s house is apparently a big bonus and is usually done when drunk, but maybe I just had odd friends when I was at Varsity.Back to the point, direct peeing can be done on well established trees, and the lawn or compost heap. Just make sure that you move your love around. Just like the grass can go brown if your dog pees in the same spot all the time, the same is true for human urine. This is due to the salt content.

If you don’t have dangly bits or prefer not to pee outside then a glass jar in the bathroom can serve to collect urine. After reading about this last night I pee’ed in a coffee jar over night and poured it out on the compost heap this morning.

Neat urine is a bit strong for plants and should not be put on the leaves, you want to dilute it about 8 to 1 or 10 to 1 and then water at the base of the pants or into a direct water bottle if you have one.

Everyone in our house now has to pee in the garden and strangely enough The Geek seems to be the most reluctant. Maybe I should get one of those female urine funnel (she wee) things so I can pee outside too because the squatting and peeing on my feet thing is just never going to happen.

The science:

2007 Washington Post, they followed a study in which human urine was used to fertilize cabbage (cabbage was chosen because it requires a lot of nitrogen for strong growth). The study found that the cabbages fertilized with human urine were larger at harvest, grew to their maximum size more quickly, and suffered less insect damage than cabbages grown with conventional fertilizers.

From The Washington Post, October 8, 2007:
“Urine is “a good natural nitrogen containing substance and probably could be easily utilized” as a fertilizer, said Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Medical Center, New York City. “There’s nothing wrong with using it,” Tierno said. He added that there is little risk of contamination by urine-borne pathogens, because they would be in competition with microorganisms found in the soil and would “probably lose the battle. Urine is actually a relatively clean substance.” Tierno is the author of the book The Secret Life of Germs.

During a pee, a healthy adult will release 11g nitrogen/urea, 1g phosphorus/super-phosphate and 2.5g potassium. Patrick Makhosi, a soil scientist with Uganda’s Kawanda Agricultural Research Organisation, confirms the efficacy of human urine as a fertiliser. He says that applying urine to growing vegetables once every week for at least two months will more than double the yield.

In one year, the average human being produces enough urine to fertilize 6,300 tomato plants which would produce 2.41 tons of tomato fruits in just one season. – ABC News Technology & Science column, Sept 9, 2009

Some additional reading it you are keen:

Science Daily
Big Blog of Gardening
Liquid Gold Book
eHow

And finally over to you

what do you think?
Is it gross?
Would you do it?
Have you done it?
Are you going to try now you know how cool your humble wee is? seems a waste to flush it.

Our new Jack Hen had a prolapse a few days after we got her, I was devastated. When I went to collect the egg there was blood on the egg and in the nesting box. I went to try find Jack Hen and she had blood on her bottom. I was going to show you a picture but The Geek has saved you all, he says you may be sensitive viewers.

I could not see much with her running around and Titus was niggly that day so I could not put him down and try look closer until The Geek got home and could help. He caught her and held her under his arm while I had a look and tried to clean her up.

When we did look we saw she had a prolapse, which basically means that part of her inside egg laying passage had come out when she laid the egg. We cleaned and disinfected it and I tried to push it back in. Poor Jack Hen was not happy obviously so she was fighting a bit which meant that as soon as I had it in she would tense up and wriggle in The Geek’s arms and pop it out again.

The prognosis, from all I read on the web was grim, the concensus was that once it happens once it happens again and usually you have to cull the bird. They said that other chickens can be a bit canabalistic and if their is blood they may peck at it and to remove her. I had not see the 2 fat chickens peak her at all during the day but we cleaned it and seperated her for the night in a box inside. The idea with the box was also to try limit her movement and food and try to stop her laying for a few weeks. The advice on line was to give them food rations just enough to keep them alive but to stop them laying and keep it dark and quiet. The trouble was that she would probably already have an egg ready for the next day so it might take a while to stop her laying and each time she did it would get worse.

Next morning, low and behold the prolapse had gone in by itself and she was letting us know very very voally what she thought of being in a box. By mid day I decided that she wanted to be out and it looked okay so to let her out, as she was probably going to lay anyway. Then if it prolapsed again we would box her in the dark and see if it helped. Against all odds she laid that day and NO prolapse! WhooHoo I was so happy. The thought of losing another of Caleb’s chickens was just too terrible to think about. I am happy to say that she lays about 5 out of 7 days a week and has had not repeat prolapse.

This brings me to the other 2 chickens, the big white broilers, the only ones left from the original lot. I was beginning to think that maybe they were rooster too. One has a comb a bit bigger than the other, but they are plumper like hens. It has been 5 months since we got them so we were expecting eggs or crowing soon.

Yesterday Rachel collected Jack Hen’s egg from the nesting box. Caleb was walking around the garden and shouted from the sandy patch near the braai where the chickens like to sit, that Jack Hen had laid another egg. When he brought it over I saw it was a very small egg. When chickens first start laying their first eggs are often smaller. So seems like one of the big fat girls is also laying at last. Which one I am not sure, and I do wish she would rather use the nesting box but I am not going to complain too much.

The egg

The size difference between the one Jack Hen laid that day and the mini starter egg

We are getting 3 new KoekKoeks soon and Rachel is coming around to the idea that if we don’t name chickens and she knows that the roosters will be eaten then she is okay with it. I hope this is true when the time comes

I decided to base our for the moment a bit on what we are doing in the garden with growing and with the chickens as the kids are involved and learning from what we are doing in this challenge.

Rachel had some wooden fruit and vegetables from her kitchen set which we put on the table on a silk which we dyed green. We added a family from her dolls house although I want to ask Ghilraen who make lovely felted figures (usually gnomes) if she will make me our family for our table. We needed a chicken so I thought it would be nice to needle felt one as I had a kit that I was keen to try.

This is how I made it.
Disclaimer: This is the second time I have needle felted anything so I just made it up as I went along. I am not sure if I did it right or if I broke some cardinal rules of felting but it worked.

I made a black and white chicken as I was making one to look like Jack Hen that is our new chicken that laying eggs. To make the black and white I took a bit of black and white fibre and layered it and then started felting. To make the ball I just kept felting around and turning it until I had a ball.

I then made another smaller ball the same way and felted it onto the bigger ball

I then took some more fibre and started making a flatter shape that I used as a tail. It was a bit big to start with but I know what to do if I want to make a peacock one day

I then felted it down and make it the curved shape like the chicken, I must admit that I did make a few trips outside to see the chicken. I did look on the internet for ideas but there were not many examples that I liked so I just kept looking at Jack Hen rather.

I was worried that it looked too much like a small bird and after a visit out to Jack Hen I decided that it needed to be a bit taller so I decided to make another ball to add on the top

I then added the comb with some red fibre

I then added a orange beak

I added some orange and red bits to the face after studying Jack Hen, I am not sure I got to totally right.

Rachel made a grass nest

This is the live model Jack Hen

I am not a vegetarian, I grew up eating meat. There was a time when I tried to be a vegetarian. There were many excellent reason; the way animals are treated in mass farming, the damaging effects on the environment of this type farming and the less than healthy meat that is the end result. I knew all the reasons and I did try but I still could not do it. I blame bacon! The smell of bacon was the cause of my high moral vegetarian resolve to crumble. I now like to believe that I am a more conscious meat eater.

Like always money features so strongly in our choices and if I could only buy organic meat I would but it is sadly out of our reach. We do eat less meat and try to make sure what we do eat is a better quality but I am embarrassed to admit that at times when life gets busy the convenience of cheap easy packaged meat in the local supermarket does lead to me having selective amnesia about most mass farming practices.

This challenge to be more sustainable puts the focus back on meat and how it is produced. We really have no excuse to eat meat and not to think about how the animals are treated.

I found these rather cute cartoons and while not all of it applies to all farms I think the idea that mass farming is damaging to land, animals and people is true

All of this brings me to the heading of this blog post. We have chickens. I always thought that they would only be for eggs but if I am serious about being sustainable then we have to talk about eating the chickens too. The idea is not appealing, and Rachel has flat out refused to eat any chicken that we have. Of course it would be easier just to carry on buying free range ( not totally sure they have a great life either) chicken and ignore where they come from. I feel strongly though that part of this challenge has to move us out of our comfort zone and has to make us reexamine things. Beacuse part of what has gotten us all into this mess on the planet is that, for convenience sake, most of us choose not to think about the damage that we are doing. Out of sight out of mind.

I think I am truly a spoilt suburban person who has never had to deal with the nitty gritty of getting meat to my plate. It is only easy to turn your nose up at growing your own meat when your life has been easy enough and you have not worried about feeding yourself and your family. In more rural areas and on small farms chickens are chickens not pets and they serve a function which is eggs and meat.

We are going to have to come to terms with what our choice to eat meat means and if we are serious about trying to be as sustainable as we can. While I can’t have a cow for milk and cheese I can have chickens for meat. This will mean increasing our flock but I think we need to seriously consider it.

Funny when your decision to have a chicken for dinner involves killing one, then you are more likely to make sure that meat is eaten less often, it is not just as easy as throwing it in the trolley, you are aware of the life and death that is part of your meal.

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

So could you eat a chicken you had raise?
Have you ever killed a chicken?

Here is our Recipe

Ingridients:
1 Geek, willing to make the crazy plans that I come up with, even thought this means not tidying the study, which he had planned to do this weekend.

Variety of pallets, that you gave acquired by careful scavenging off building site and other industrial areas, where they have been discarded. ( Be sure to ask if you may re-home these items as no allowance is made in this recipe for time in jail)

Nails, screws, hammers and whatever other thingymabobs that one needs to put these piece of wood together, this is The Geeks department and I am sure if he is worth his handy man status he has all that is required.

Herbs and seeds

Soil

Plant food

Mulch

Empty plastic bottles 500ml ( smaller water one are better for this than the than bigger 2L ones which can be used for trees)

Method:

Bat eyelids at your Geek and kindly request that he make the said herb pyramid, open Pinterest and show him your example with great excitement. A good man, who is always a keeper, likes to make his lady happy so the trick here is to be excited and to let him know how happy this would make you. Men work on a reward system they like to add points to their side of the score board as it may all lead you feeling inclined to reward him in a affectionate way later.

The Geek then measures the boxes and makes each one progressively smaller but with longer stilts to hold them up. Make sure that when the boxes are inside each other that the spaces between are big enough for planting as we did need to take one of the boxes apart and shorten all the sides and the space was not big enough.

Plan where your herb pyramid is going to go. I am a huge fan of build up no dig gardening. I cover whatever area that I am going to be planing on with cardboard to kill the grass or weeds underneath ad then I layer on top of that.

You want a food layer on the bottom of each layer, the trough are small so you don’t want anything too strong as you don’t want to burn the roots. I mixed a little chicken manure to a lot of well decomposed compost mixed with potting soil.

Plan the herb layers, you need plants that like it hot and dryer near the top so Rosemary, sage, marjoram and oregano. In the middle layer you want chives, garlic, parsley, and chamomile. While on the bottom plan for your water loving mint, coriander, dill and basil.

If you live in a cooler climate you may want to use a brick spiral to trap heat but for us we have too much heat so the pallet box system works better. Here is a great link to the Herb brick spiral

Drill small holes in the lid of the water bottles. Make sure that they are not too big as you want the water to trickle in slowly. Cut off the bottom of the bottle and plant upside down, a few per layer. Alternatively take a glass bottle and fill with water and push into the ground, it will trickle water in the same way. We found that the glass ones empty slower than the plastic ones but the we may just have drilled our holes a little too big.

Mulch well and done

Don’t forget to reward your man well.

They are all around our homeschool room walls.

I love the winter and summer rainfall pies that show you what to plant all year around.

What I love about these posters is that they are clear and easy to use. They are simple enough for children to understand but yet give a lot of information for adults to use. I know they are going to be a great resource for us. I would highly recommend them to anyone wanting to start their own food garden, those home schooling and teaching kids about growing, for regular schools and any organization wanting to get become greener.

The posters are free to social welfare and educational organisations, otherwise they cost R 60 each incl postage. The planting calendars are available in a laminated retail version for R 80 incl postage.
Check out the entire set of posters on flickr or facebook.
Here is the list of posters available. Contact Afristar for more details.

Companion planting: This table shows which plants you should plant together which have a positive effect like increasing yield or deterring bugs, and which plants not to plant together. I am using this to help plan our new garden.

Recycling Greywater: I am very interested in figuring out how we can reuse our greywater. Greywater is water from sink, basin, bath or washing machine which can be saved and used to water the garden

Making compost: We do have a compost heap but this one has some good points to remember and ways that we can improve our compost heap. A great visual for those wanting to start composting

Permaculture Guilds: A plant guild is a group of plants that collectively increase productivity of the whole system.

Planting a tree: I want to plant a tree for each of the kids this year so we will be looking at and talking about this poster a lot.

Summer Rainfall and Winter Rainfall planting calendars: This pie chart is wonderful divides the year up and shows what you can plant each month through the whole year,I am going to be using this one a lot. A must for everyone wanting to start growing and I love that there are 2 based on the different rainfall areas

Permaculture Water Principles: We need to not only save water but think about capturing and using more of the rainwater that falls Practical illustrations show how to capture the water entering your system and put it to good use.

Worm Farms: we have some red wrigglers already but this is a lovely poster that shows you can make a womery from a stack of old tires.

Permaculture Zones: This helps plan where to plant things, you plant the things needing the most care and that you use closest to the house and then things get further away that need less care and you visit less frequently.

Liquid Manure: You can make liquid manure from animal dropping and we have a lot of chicken poop around, this poster shows how to mix and dilute to get the best tea to water the garden with.

Social Permaculture: Talking Stick Circle Ensures everyone gets a fair chance to participate. Although we are doing this as a family maybe we should have a stick so everyone gets a chance to talk.

I really recommend these or at least some specific ones that appeal to your individual needs for anyone that is thinking of growing their own.

Alice the birthday girl

This way, That way, Up, down Sign

Some of the Guests

Brothers, much better than Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

Mad Hatter Boys

The Cheshire cat with his grin

White Rabbit

Queen of Hearts Soldiers

Papa looking just down right odd

The Cake

My sister, Jenni, in the UK make amazing cakes and she found these figures for me to use as there was no way I could mold them. She then emailed me the design and talked me through how to make it. I think for a non cake maker it came out okay.

Party Bags
I used 2 liter milk bottles and cut the tops off to make the party bags which I then turned into white rabbit by attaching ears and eyes and a packet watch and drawing a face

Each bag had a bath fizz with hearts in which had made the previous week

A Mome Rath ( they are little pom pom head type creatures that make a arrow for Alice to follow in the forest) made from 2 different pipe cleaners gun gunned together with a pom pom head and googly eyes

 The rest of the bag was sweets and goodies

The Table Decorations and Food

I made a cake stand using odd cups and saucers and plates that I had collected at 2nd hand shops, they are slightly harder to find than you would think. Then I glue gunned them together ( well by I it is implied The Geek )

I found this Cheshire cat pattern on line and of course I had to knit it for the table. I did land up sewing him at after the cake and table was done the night before and the crown was made so I did not go to bed that night. *sigh*, I always try do too much.

I found these Eat Me and Drink Me signs from Pinterest here

Made Cheshire Cat Tails from marshmallows and chocolate, it was harder to make the purple than I thought it would be. Also saw the idea on Pinterest, not that mine looked even half as good

Our take on Bread and Butterflies

Queen of Hearts Jam Tarts

Heart Cupcakes

Rainbow Jelly, this was fun to make but took a long time

I found this little teapot with a hole in it and thought it would be cute for the Dormouse to sit in

Tea Party

Blowing out candles

All in all I think it all went well.

But this year I want to start a Green/Sustainability Challenge. I want to see how green and self sustainable we can be in an urban area. So much of the stuff I have read about being sustainable is based on people moving or having more space and the average person. This suggestion is 2 acers which is just not realistic for most.

From Progressive Pioneer as seen on Pinterest

I love the book It’s Not Easy Being Green

It is about a British Family’s Journey towards Eco-living but they move to a new house in the country and have lots of space and try to go completely off the grid. But it is a great read and there are some wonderful tips for average people too.

While I think we might have more space than the average as we have quite a bit garden we are still urban, we have the urban bi-laws and other limitations of not having a farm or small holding. But since a lot of us live in urban areas surely there should be a way we can be more green and more self sufficient than we are.

After all we either create and produce or we consume and take away. I know we can’t get totally off the grid and there are some luxuries that we still want but I think in a small way there are things that we can all do. This is my year to see how far we can go in our goal. I know it will take more than a year but I want us to set the habit of being mindful of our drain on resources and see what we can do to counter it. We will never be able to do everything ourselves but I could finding local produce for what we can’t make or grow and working within our community.

Pros/ What we have
•  We have space. A big garden and enough area to grow food for ourselves. Is it enough to feed us all year? I am not sure yet @mattallison from I’m no Jamie Oliver suggested on twitter than one needs about 200-400m² to grow enough food for a family and have some left over. My very rough pacing out in the garden says we have about 220m² of area that we wanted to set aside for the food garden.
• We have a lot of sunshine so we should be able use solar energy
• We have a borehole to ground water. If we get the pimp fixed then having water for the garden should be easy even though we live in a dry area
• We have wind, Cape in notorious for wind and as we are on the west coast we get a lot of wind
• The Geek, he is a great asset he is keen, hard working, handy and can build stuff and brainy. He loves researchig things and has been looking into the wind and solar options and knows how to do all the Math and Sciency stuff we need
• Seaweed, we live very close to the beach and although or soil is not great here we have seaweed to help us fix this problem
• Wormery: We have a wormey to make compost and worm tea
• Chickens, although there have been sagas and we only have one how is laying, we should soon have all the eggs we need from our chickens. Meat? Well let me address that under cons.

Cons/Limitations

• Money, this is always going to be our hugest limiting factor. We would love to add a rain water collector, solar panels, wind turbine and borehole pump but sadly the budget does not allow, even if in the long run it will pay off, we still have to have the cash now. I will try save slowly during the year for these.
• Meat, while we can keep meat chickens I am not sure that the children (or me to be honest) could eat chickens we have raised. I understand this is very hypocritical and that our meat would be a lot healthier. Maybe time will change this. With a bigger flock and the birds being less individuals it might be easier.
• Bad sandy west coast soil, if you see above we have been working on this and have compost, worms and seaweed to help
• Space for other livestock.  Although I am sure we could have a goat, The Geek does not agree.
• Space for wheat, we will always need to rely on others for flour but I would like to find a local source and maybe grind our own. I would also like to decrease our wheat consumption as I am sure we should not eat as much as we do.